Page 46 - A Woman Is No Man

Isra

Spring 1990

Isra arrived in New York the day after her wedding ceremony, via a twelve-

hour flight from Tel Aviv. Her first glimpse of the city was from the plane
as they approached John F. Kennedy Airport. Her eyes widened and she
pressed her nose against the window. She thought she had fallen in love. It
was the city itself that captivated her first, immaculate buildings stories
high—hundreds of them. From above, Manhattan looked so thin, like the
buildings could just crack it in half, as though they were too heavy for that
small sliver of land. As the plane neared the earth, Isra felt herself swell up.

The Manhattan skyline turned from toylike to mountainous, its towers and
citadels shooting upward like fireworks bursting into the sky, overwhelming
in height and power, making Isra feel small, yet at the same time bewildered
by their beauty, as if they were something out of a fairy tale. Even if she
had read a thousand books, nothing could compare to the feeling she had
now as she inhaled the view.

She could still see the skyline when the plane landed, though now it was
a faint outline with a bluish hue on the far horizon. If Isra squinted, it
almost seemed like she was looking at the mountains of Palestine, the
buildings like dusty hills in the distance. She wondered what else she would
see in the days to come.
“This is Queens,” Adam told her as they waited in line for a cab outside
the airport. Once inside the minivan, Isra sat near a window in the back row,

hoping Adam would sit beside her, but Sarah and Fareeda joined her
instead. “It’s about a forty-five-minute ride to Brooklyn where we live,”
Adam continued as he sat beside his brothers in the middle row. “If we’re
not stuck in traffic, that is.”
Isra studied Queens through the taxicab window, eyes wide and

watering in the March sunlight. She searched for the immaculate skyline
she had seen from the plane, but it was nowhere in sight. All she could see
were endless gray roads, curving and looping back in on themselves, with